Something interesting is happening out there.Â Good Morning America plays at the gym while I’m doing my cardio.Â Last week they had a Dave Ramsey one talking about personal finance.Â Dude was a ball buster.Â Here’s the video.Â I know a lot of PBE readers have problems on the income side of the equation.Â Later in the week I heard Michael Finney on KGO talking about the same thing.Â His money guys were advising to get the income side in order and then get a 3-6 month emergency fund in order and THEN start attacking the credit cards.Â I thought this was interesting, but here’s their logic.Â If you get into trouble the credit card companies will lower your balances when they see something hinky.Â So say if you’ve got a $10,000 limit on a Visa card with a low balance and it gets paid regularly.Â Maybe you get behind on a Mastercard but keep that Visa in good shape because it’s your bailout card.Â They may very well lower your credit limit on that Visa and squeeze you.Â So they are advising instead of making debt elimination your priority, make the emergency fund your priority in this economy.Â I can’t imagine the credit card companies like hearing that, but I should have spent less time trying to pay them and more time squirreling away nuggets.Â They’ve all dropped their credit limits on me and every time I make a payment they drop the limit to the current balance.Â So I have no wiggle room there.Â So I’m holding off giving them what they want just in case something gets sideways on me.Â My credit is demolished which is tough to take for someone who used to carry no credit card debt.Â I was all cash until two years ago, with luckily a large emergency fund.Â Now my European shoe size is probably a bigger number than my credit score and my emergency fund is having an emergency of it’s own.Â Anyway, I thought the shift in thinking was interesting.Â If that’s what the talking heads are telling the masses it’s not pretty for the credit card companies.

Onward and upward

Bubba came in the other day with a bloodied cut on his nose.Â I don’t know if he cut it on something in the yard or if Rita got him.Â Anyway, it seems to have scarred.Â We will now call him Scarface.

The Depression garden is coming along.Â I have 50 little peat pots that are cruising along.Â I’m taking them outside for a couple of hours a day now to start hardening them up.Â I’ve got little tomatoes, squash, lettuce, spinach all going.Â I forgot to start my peppers from the seeds I got from the house in Hayward.Â Those were nasty ass peppers.

I’ve got a training ride and then some other interesting things going on later on today.Â We’ll see where it leads.